Keynote Lecture and Conversation: European Societies and the Holocaust
Despite an extensive body of research on the Holocaust—from largely policy-oriented, perpetrator-driven studies, through to integrating the voices of victims—we still do not have a clear understanding of the roles of members of surrounding societies. Why did so many people across Europe remain passive in the face of the violence against those stigmatized as “others,” or indeed variously facilitate and benefit from the exclusion, expropriation, and extermination of European Jews? Under what conditions, by contrast, were people more likely to offer assistance to fugitives, and what social and political circumstances were more conducive to the survival of victims of persecution?
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The growing number of micro-historical studies exploring local involvement in perpetration, or the far rarer cases of rescue and survival, have yet to be brought into any kind of wider pan-European synthesis.
Building on the previous work on her book Bystander Society, and based on her current research for a book on hiding from the Holocaust, in this lecture Mary Fulbrook brings the wider societal background to the fore and assesses the implications for representations in museums, public education, and historical accounts.
Mary Fulbrook, FBA, is Professor of German History at University College London (UCL) and former Executive Dean of the UCL Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences. She is the author of numerous monographs, including Bystander Society: Conformity and Complicity in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust (2023), the Wolfson History Prize–winning Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice (2018), and the Fraenkel Prize–winning A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust (2012). She has also written several books on the GDR as well as more general introductions to German history, such as, most recently, Ten Moments that Shaped Berlin (2025). Her edited books include, with Jürgen Matthäus, The Cambridge History of the Holocaust, Vol. 2 (2025).
She serves on many international academic advisory boards, including the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
- Presented in English
- Featuring a musical performance by students of the Barenboim-Said Akademie
Additional information
Dates
June 2026
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